These days, I so often go into a therapy session not knowing what I’m going to discuss with my therapist because I feel like things are fine. They aren’t fine. I mean, in general, life is decent, but there are lingering things that affect me. I still struggle to talk about my emotions and certain things from the past; I can talk about all the abuse I endured and not shed a tear, but get me on the topic of my feelings and I become a crying mess. Today the 2 miscarriages I had in 2013 came up, as a result of bringing up yesterday’s 7 year anniversary of my suicide attempt. I discussed the attempt with no emotion, but I sobbed talking about the loss of 2 pregnancies. This all led to a simple, yet not so simple question from my therapist:

“How do you feel about yourself?”

My answer contained some of the judgements I have about myself and how I think others view me: fat, ugly, bad skin, broken, a disappointment.

That wasn’t what my therapist was looking for, though she did acknowledge that these are things I think about myself and believe others think of me. What she was asking was, who am I at my core? What do I feel? Thinking of me as a child, innocent, before all the trauma and life things happened.

Peel back the layers of the onion. What’s hidden under all those layers?

Thinking about myself as a child, before everything went to shit, I was happy, wild, free, unafraid.

I don’t know now. I don’t have an answer that isn’t a long list of judgments. I can talk to other people about their feelings and emotions, but when it comes to mine, I draw a blank. a big ole “Fuck if I know.”

I want to change. I want to know who I am, how I feel about myself, but damn, that is terrifying. I’ve been disconnected from myself for a really long time because I’ve just been trying to survive.

How do I feel about myself? Who am I?

To be continued…